Condiments company Just Inc. has rustled up some interesting corporate sagas. Kaitlyn Flannagan for Observer When you think about it, there’s an intriguing duality to naming your company Just Inc. Sure, the moniker implies simplicity and virtue—a belief that only fundamental ingredients are needed in products and in commerce—but there’s also an evasiveness to it...
The total revenue generated by the world's 500 largest family businesses grew by 9.9% in the past 24 months, while the number of family businesses from technology-enabled industries increased significantly in their representation in the index over the same period, from 28% in 2017 to 38% in this year's Index...
Corporate disclosures and presentations too often presume that investors ... is often much simpler: Investors care about risk and good governance...
Snap’s success may require a change in leadership. Unfortunately, the power doesn’t lie with the board, it’s squarely in the hands of Spiegel and Murphy who hold all the voting rights...
A leading Barclays shareholder has ditched its £600 million stake in the bank – dealing a blow to boss Jes Staley as he battles a corporate raider. US hedge fund Tiger Global's decision to pull out ...
After years of asking corporate directors about the importance of diversity in ... in cooperation with Stanford's Rock Center for Corporate Governance , ...
For corporate boardrooms continuously improving is not a luxury, it is an imperative. Begin by avoiding these basic problems...
Under SB-826, California became the first state to pass legislation to require that publicly traded companies have at least one woman on their board. Specifically, companies in California will need to achieve this by 2019. Starting in 2021, the required number of women on boards will increase based on the overall size of the board. For example, if a board has five directors, two of them must be women, and if it has six or more directors, three of them must be women. Companies that fail to recruit the requisite number of women will face a $100,000 fine for ...
Shares of Papa John's (NASDAQ: PZZA) continue to rise in the aftermath of activist investor Starboard Value injecting $200 million into the pizzeria and having the hedge fund's founder Jeffrey Smith take on the role of chairman of the board...
Political proposals on hot button topics like climate mitigation, guaranteed jobs, wealth tax and single payor healthcare are often dismissed as extremist, or as downright crazy. Mention “national mobilization” and some knees are going to jerk. But given the passage of time and changed circumstances, some crazy ideas actually tend to stick...
The pitfalls of such corporate governance arrangements are numerous and could be perilous for shareholders. Some defensive investors, or those ...
Notwithstanding that shareholder activist funds themselves continue to have below-market returns, shareholder activism continues to expand and intensify. While many commentators have cited 2018 as a “record year” for activism in terms of number of campaigns, capital deployed, number of activists involved, first-time activists, and board seats obtained, the growth of activism from 2017 to 2018 was modest, particularly when campaigns against an announced merger and short seller campaigns are excluded. In addition, first time targets in the U.S. represented less than 43% of financial activist’s targets...
Talk about a disconcerting disconnect. The investor community is putting more pressure than ever on companies to consider environmental, social and governance issues in strategic decisions — everything from climate change to diversity — but that message is falling flat in some boardrooms. Here’s the stark reality...
In a recent federal filing before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, lawyers for Apple ( AAPL ) maintained that the tech giant should not have to consider increasing its leadership's ideological diversity and that arguments made in support of greater viewpoint variance were "without merit." X The SEC disagreed , sending Apple's legal team a stunning rebuke...
The pipeline for executive women to fill corporate board seats remains challenged, but here are critical steps to take that will advance your board service opportunities...
Unlike every other SEC-required disclosure, the CEO pay ratio may be reported absent any context whatsoever. All that’s required is the ratio itself, such as “300:1.” “It’s very bizarre,” Georgiev tells CFO . That’s particularly so, he points out, for a couple of reasons...
Elliott lashed out at the family-run company's corporate governance and called for cost cuts to fix its poor performance versus peers. Bloomberg News ...
The interests of shareholders are too often subjugated to those of interested parties. This circumstance has resulted in the transference of significant value from the rightful owners, the shareholders, to those unentitled. Institutional fund managers have undertaken commendable initiatives toward improving compliance with environmental, social and governance...
U.S. public companies face a wide array of challenges, from greater market volatility and increasing economic and geopolitical uncertainty to disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence, social media and cybersecurity incidents The new year also began with a shutdown of the federal government and a divided government, reflecting deep societal schisms on numerous and varied questions that may impact the environment in which companies and boards operate...
Jeff Bezos’ explicit selfies and public attack on the National Enquirer make him part of the club of tech executives behaving badly. But his troubles aren’t likely to roil Amazon - at least for now...
By some accounts, public markets are out of fashion. Detractors point to the decline of IPOs in developed economies and the growth of private capital pools over the last few years. But these trends tell only one side of the story. Private markets are doing well, but their success does not suggest the decline of public markets. Public markets continue to be an essential driver of wealth creation, innovation, and capital stability for high-performing companies. Despite the short-term pressures of public markets, the best-managed companies can and do take advantage of the benefits public markets have to offer. For companies ...
Most Americans have a sizable share of the money set aside for retirement in the stock market, and the growth of public corporations benefits them. The nudges that Proxy Advisory firms give to public corporations to put public policy objectives ahead of profits harms them all...